August 28, 2009

Losing
Ellie Greenwich this week was a personal loss. Not like her family who are deeply
grieving or her friends who knew her and worked with her. To me she was a new
friend who had only known me for a few weeks….and for an old music historian
from the 70s to be friends with an icon of pop music in the 60s was
well….special.

It is the
loss of what a developing friendship can bring that is sad. And she loved The
Four Seasons and it would have been good to capture some of her stories behind
the music: and to just get to know her.

It might
seem unusual for fans of the Four Seasons to see a link with Ellie Greenwich
and the group but it is said she contributed to the group’s tracks and we know
she was a close friend of Bob Crewe. Certainly Bob Crewe and former Four Season
Jerry Corbetta helped produce her Broadway musical ‘Leader Of The Pack’ in the
1980s. But Ellie was a 60s music icon as much as the Four Seasons.

The L.A
Times says of her…

“Ellie also broke ground as one of the first
female record producers, working with husband Jeff Barry in crafting Diamond’s
early recordings, including “Cherry Cherry,” ”Solitary Man” and “Kentucky Woman.”. Diamond
had struggled as a songwriter until he came under the wing of Greenwich and
Barry, who’d already logged numerous shimmering pop hits for groups such as the
Ronettes, the Crystals, the Dixie Cups and Ronnie Spector.”

Our current research on Jean
Thomas’s session logs in 1966 are revealing the sessions with Neil that would
shape his career . Neil said in a statement.. “Ellie Greenwich was one of the
most important people in my career, she discovered me as a down-and-out
songwriter.”

She also
did the back-up work with Jean Thomas for Connie Francis….Andy Kim and for Bob
Crewe on the Leslie Gore productions as well as many others as Jean’s session
logs show. She also produced and sang on some of the Ronettes later sessions.
For an example of her production and backing work listen to the Tony Pass
tracks that Ellie did with husband Jeff Barry at Jean Thomas’s blog post ‘Out
Of The Closet – Part1

But it
was her earlier work in 1963 that was the most important…the L.A. Times again..

“Their collaborations with Wall of Sound
creator Spectorare regarded among the greatest
singles ever created. The music publishing rights organization Broadcast Music Inc.
lists more than 200 songs she wrote or co-wrote, including "Then He Kissed
Me" (the Crystals), "I Can Hear Music" (The Ronettes, Beach
Boys), "Hanky Panky" (a hit for Tommy James & the Shondells),
"Maybe I Know" (Lesley Gore) and the song Spector considered his
greatest recording, "River Deep, Mountain High" (Ike and Tina Turner).

Greenwich has said that the title phrase of "Da Doo Ron Ron" was
never intended to be part of the song; it was improvised as a nonsensical space
filler until she and Barry could come up with a real line to follow the tune's opening lyric:
"I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still."

"We got all the rest of the words
and music together, but we couldn't find anything for this bit," she said
in 2005. "Believe me, it doesn't mean a thing." On the other hand, when
she and Barry wrote "There she goes just a walkin' down the street"
to start another song, she responded with what she imagined a young girl
skipping down a street would sing: "Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do."
"Do Wah Diddy Diddy" became a No. 1 hit in 1965 for the British group
Manfred Mann”

Greenwich suffered a nervous breakdown
after she and Barry divorced in 1965,(although she still worked tirelessly) and
the hits stopped flowing. The public's attention was shifting to the Beatles
and other British invasion bands as well as a rising crop of self-contained
singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, putting many Bril Building
pros out of work.

When my marriage fell apart and my style dropped out offashion, it seemed
there wasn't anything left," she told an Australian newspaper in 2005.
“It's easy to say I had plenty left, but
that's not how it seems when you're there."

Jean
Thomas remembers Ellie with great fondness.” I will miss her a great
deal. We all will!!!!” I feel so sad!!!! But I'm so happy
Ellie, Mikie and I had that long, long lunch not too long ago. The three
of us were looking forward to the next one.”

“Ellie was such a talent. Alongside Carol King she is arguably one of
the most important female writers, producers, performers in New Yorkduring the 60s….I can remember when she had nine Top Ten hits on the
Hot 100 charts in one year.”

And as a result of our
work with Jean and the interest of others she was less reclusive recently and
contacted me about our research. A few weeks ago, when I wrote her on Facebook
she said ….”Thanks for the heartwarming
compliments. Jean and I have been out of touch for so long and we are just
updating our friendship. I speak to Bob Crewe regularly and he is doing just
fine. Hopefully someday I will get a chance to say hello to you in person.…. I
find it amazing there is so much stuff out there with things I sang on, clapped
on, ate on, etc. It would be great if
you put up something for ‘Goodnight Goodnight’ . That was one of my favorite
songs. I wrote ‘Goodnight, Goodnight’ with Bob Crewe around 1966/67. It was on
the b-side of I Want You To Be My Baby. We were kind of hoping for a possible
two sided success but no such luck. It's still one of my favorite songs.”

Unfortunately I didn’t manage it in time or to
ask her about how she helped out on Four Seasons records. But now here it is …..thanks
to Casey and our other researchers for their help with what has become our tribute….

I don't
think there is a female producer/writer from the 60s who I admire more. Her
work with Jean and Mikie remain for me the forgotten legacy of her 60s career
and as we complete Jean’s bios we will reveal more about this 60s ‘harmony
heroine’

Perhaps ‘Goodnight, Goodnight’ is a fitting
epitaph but because she was such a good writer I would still love to hear the
unreleased Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons track she wrote with Bob Crewe
and Steve Tudanger (ex ‘Four-Evers’) in 1973 ‘Be My Lover, Be My Friend’ which is lying unheard in the Motown
Vaults. It never surfaced in her lifetime and it may never in ours! But most of
all I’ll miss my new Facebook friend and the fun we might have had with stories
of music making to share with her fans!!

Ken
Charmer

Thanks to
George Schowerer (photos), Martin Roberts(pic sleeves) and special thanks to
Jean Thomas and Bob Crewe.

August 23, 2009

As 1962
ushered in the Fall, The Four Seasons follow up to their number 1 hit ‘Sherry’
was so eagerly awaited that Billboard missed it….that is until it quickly
became a ‘National Breakout’ hit…’New on the Hot 100 at # 66’

TV
appearances were essential for promotion but some surprises were found when we
reviewed their early TV appearances…….like the time Bob Gaudio
played guitar!!

As the year
ends and Billboard reviews the music market big things are expected from the
Four Seasons latest 45. 1963 would establish them but also leave them caught
between two audiences. Their traditional ‘adult’ audience from their Four
Lovers days: and the powerful ‘teen’ audience who were notoriously fickle.

August 19, 2009

The Music
scene in Billboard by 1961 was very different to the 50s scene of the Four
Lovers. ‘Teen’ purchasing of 45s was now a major force and the songs of the Bril Buildingwere dominating the Charts. Chubby Checker was huge and the dance crazes were
all over the charts. By 1962 the Four Seasons had been born! Well by November
1961 when they recorded and released ‘Bermuda’
which surfaced in Billboard in February 1962. An inauspicious beginning this
was to be and it gave no clue to their first number 1 which would arrive by the end
of summer……when they asked a young lady to “come out …to my twist party”!!

August 17, 2009

Even the
biggest Four Seasons fan alive today will never have followed The Four Lovers back
in 1956. Most will have shown an interest in them as a result of their
connection with Frankie, Tommy and Nick. So, when I started reading the
Billboard magazines on the Internet and looking at the music world of the
pre-four Seasons it was very strange. In Jersey Boys, the musical story of the
life and times of the group, this period is almost an embarrassment to the
group. But when I looked at the story of the arrival of the Four Seasons,
through the pages of Billboard, it proved to be more enlightening than I
expected. So I assembled it in scrapbook form as we have in the Newsletters for
many years. I found it paints a different picture in some ways than the show.

First of
all Frankie Valli appeared in the music business’s top newspaper several times
before the Four Seasons arrived and we can see how it was a very different
world for them in the 50s than in the 60s.

Part 1 of
our collection covers 1954 to 1961 documents the attempts to find success is a world
very alien to the teen crowd I belonged to in the 60s. The world Frankie and
the guys were working in during the mid to late 50s was a left-over from the
war years. Their audiences were we must assume mainly ‘adult’ ( well teens couldn’t get into the
bars and dives of the day) and audiences wanted an act that could do the 40s
and 50s hits from the likes of The Mills Bros, and The Four Freshmen….and even
The Andrew Sisters ( with…”I Can Dream Can’t I’).

And their
attempts to win over a ‘teen’ audience with the Four Lovers sound which brought
them some success in 1956 was clearly out of sync by 1957 when rock’n’roll and
the music of Elvis and Buddy Holly was leaving the sound of the Lovers behind.
But ‘you gotta make a living’ so the adult audiences in the dives from New
Jersey down to Wildwood had to be given what they wanted……Places like Wildwood
are a scene that is hard for Europeans to appreciate…This is an internet description....”From the late 1940s
through the 1960s, the “Five-Mile Beach” prospered in the Post-World-War-II
economic boom. The middle class was growing and they loved their vacations at
theJersey Shore. Tourists flocked to the sprawling
beaches and amusement piers that made this island famous. Even more famous was
the night life. The Wildwoods’ entertainment scene earned it the nickname the “Las Vegas of the East”.
It is the birthplace of Bill Haley and The Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” and
Chubby Checker’s “TheTwist.” Places like the Riptide Club, The HofBrau and The
Bolero hosted many of the era’s great performers. Dick Clark spun records for
American Bandstand at The Starlight Ballroom. As one author imagined: Dazzling
lights draw charmed tourists down the strip, past garish hotels and plastic
palms swaying against a star-filled night. Caravans of Bel Airs and
Thunderbirds, Packards and Chevy Townsman take to the streets. Marquees flash
big names: Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis, Jr., Johnny Mathis, The Drifters, and
Fabian. The sidewalk pulsates as the music captivates. It could be Sunday or
Tuesday, but it feels like Saturday, as crowds with Coppertone tans and money
in their pockets, drift along the avenue....And in the background was an island
full of ‘motor-hotels;’ their rooms brimming with stories and full of
mid-century character and charm.”

Meeting the
needs of this crowd was necessary to put bread on the table.

The New Jersey club scene would be an interesting read.

A biography of the pre-Seasons days has been promised but will it ever see the light of day whilst thegroup members are alive?

August 12, 2009

Very few
live performances of the original Four Seasons have survived and some don’t do
them justice. Their ability to entertain an adult as well as a teen audience
has recently come into focus as our forthcoming posts will show.

So as a
tribute to the late Nick Massi and to illustrate what they could do we
constructed a video for the song, “Close Your Eyes” from our very first live
tape of the group at

Clearwater

in 1964.(track courtesy of John Hornsby) Originally by the Five Keys and a hit in 1955.Nick and Frankie do a great version.

August 03, 2009

“It was 1966. The radio as always, was on and a new rock
hit version of “I´ve Got You Under My Skin” was playing. This was the first
time I took notice of “The Four Seasons”. I lived in Bristol, Rhode Island ,
a million miles away from anything like what I was hearing that day, yet I
thought to myself: “One day I would love to be a member of that
group!”.......................”

The opening words of John
Paiva’s biography and our major story of the Four Seasons..The Rise and Fall of
the NEW Four Seasons….

It took many months to
assemble the story for Chapter 5 alone and in it you can read how…….

The group was in disarray after the failure of
‘Chameleon’

Singles were recorded and released as the Four
Seasons with no group members except Frankie Valli on them

Motown didn’t pay them any royalties

Frankie sacked the group and started building
from scratch

The NEW Four Seasons were recruited

Motown refused to release ‘My Eyes Adored you.

Frankie bought the song and took it to Larry
Uttal

Joe Long left the group after recording on ‘Who
Loves You’

And you will also find how
the group rose to be the most successful Four Seasons ever.

All compiled from articles
and bios and clips from George Ingram and Frank Rovello’s article archives and our newsletters from the 1970s

Here is our‘Introduction’….and we start with our Chapter 5 ( a bit like ‘Star
Wars’ we start in the middle of the story) It can be downloaded in 3 parts.

August 02, 2009

Did you
ever wish there was a Four Seasons biography?. You know, a definitive story of
all the ups and downs from 1953 to 1978 or thereabouts covering all the hits
and misses and some of the stories behind the music.

Jersey Boys is a great play
. Even though Bob Gaudio claims it is 95% correct we all know it is more like
50%. And, it is, perhaps more successful because of what it leaves out…as Charles
Alexander observes… What is left out? While the first part of Jersey Boys
makes a running joke of the group’s many names before they settled on “The Four
Seasons” (the Four Lovers, the Romans, the Topics, etc.), the play never
mentions that the group actually released records under these names or that the
first record released by “The Four Seasons” was a dud called Bermuda.
Watching Jersey Boys, you would think that the first recording they ever
released was Sherry. There is no hint of Valli’s severe hearing loss
that left him nearly deaf for many years until some operations helped ease the
ailment. The most significant historical inaccuracy is that the play has Massi
and DeVito leaving the group at about the same time when every fan knows that
Nick left years before Tommy did.

Fans may quarrel with
this jumbled chronology, but they should understand that this is drama, not
history. The audience is told that the group gets together in the 1950s, but
then the play stops giving dates. Rather than being bound by chronology, Jersey
Boys becomes a timeless story that never loses its dramatic focus.”

But if fans
of either Jersey Boys or the group want to take that next step and find out the
real story behind the group where do they turn?

.

We’ve been
promised biographies by Tommy DeVito (with Rex Woodard), Bob Crewe and Charlie
Calello but perhaps there is a thought that too much information could
challenge the current bio…’Jersey Boys’. Surely not, because as it’s popularity
grows the thirst for stories will increase and even the writers know this book is
a work of fiction as admitted to in perhaps the only Four Seasons ‘reference…..
The Jersey Boys Book and at least
that has accurate comments from Charlie Calello and Rik Elice. But as Rik
confirms of the show……

“There are fictions in Jersey Boys that we created because the surviving members
of the band did not want the real story to be told in a completely frontal way.
There may have been certain relationships that they didn’t want to re-kindle or
agitate. And then there were issues that remain between Bob and Frankie,
between Frankie and Tommy, between Tommy and the other two guys. Some things
were out of bounds. We didn’t necessarily know what these were until we wrote
them and then were told, “No, you can’t use that”. Even so our original
contract of intent with them was a warts-and-all version of their story. It
would be a rags to riches story with specific landmarks from their lives and
careers………It was our contention that if the play were well made enough fans
would buy into the show for it’s own sake and not get hung up on the fact that
we were taking dramatic license.”

This was spot on by Rik and he was
right to some extent about the fans. We all accept the show and love it as a
piece of entertainment featuring our favourite songs and characters and our
praise for the writing, production and commitment and professionalism of the
cast is unbounded..

So in the absence of something from
the participants we the fans have gathered from our library of articles,
interviews and comments a sample of what can be done by way of further bios and
we will share these with our readers over the next month and in our newsletter.
Just background reading that puts the music and performances in perspective.

Coming soon…..

The Arrival of the Four Seasons

How did Billboard, the world’s most
important music paper track the rise from nowhere of a group named The Four
Seasons?

The Rise and Fall of NEW The Four Seasons.

When Nick Massi left and Bob Gaudio
had to seek a new direction for the group, little did he know it would take 10
years before they hit No 1 again. Read our first Chapter in that story. Chapter
5 1973 -1975